Falling in love with Starbucks

My relationship with coffee is long and complicated.

My parents drank - and still drink - rot gut, cheap-as-it-gets coffee that didn’t provide the most alluring introduction to coffee. (Sorry Mom.)

In college, I started drinking coffee to fuel late-night study sessions. I took it black and bought it from a “trendy” coffee shop down the street from my college.

After college I started to travel more and fell in love with the third wave coffee shops of New York City, Chicago, and further afield. These shops, which were growing as an alternative to the proliferation of Starbucks, were new and cool. They treated coffee like an art form, with an emphasis on the craft of the barista and the purity of the sourcing. I loved these places until I didn't.

At some point, my love affair with elite coffee shops started to wane. The self satisfied service style became grating. Asking for a decaf earned you an admonishing. Their insistence on doing things the “right” way wasn’t a problem, per se, but the way the message was delivered (without finesse) became too much to handle.

To be fair, I still frequent a variety of small, third-wave coffee shops. A couple of my hometown favorites are the Harbinger and Baba’s.

But as time has passed, I’ve gone from being anti-Starbucks to a fan.

First, the quality of their simplest drinks is good enough, and perhaps even slightly better than it needs to be. I take a small (or “tall” in Starbucksian parlance) Americano. It is just as good (and occasionally better) than the same drink from a number of small, indie coffee shops.

Second, their service acumen is impressive. As I get older, I find myself caring little less about the product and more about the people. (By that I mean I’d rather have a decent cup of coffee served by good people than a great cup served by a jackass.) Starbucks manages to train some very engaged, empathetic and enthusiastic people. They are drinking the Kool-Aid.

Finally, the sheer ubiquity of the shops, a trait I used to deplore, has become a godsend. On road trips, in middle America shopping malls, or when visiting my folks at home, I know I can count on a Starbucks within 5 miles.